Blog Master

Today is a hard day for the progressive revolution. One of the most important leaders of our movement has made the decision to endorse Hilary Clinton for President ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

What Senator Sanders hopes to gain from this is hard to understand. Perhaps he feels that the progressive agenda is better served in his attempt to unify a broken party. Perhaps he has come to believe that Secretary Clinton will be a good president. Perhaps he, like so many other Americans, is simply terrified by the specter of a Trump presidency. It is hard to say.

All I can say is that I cannot in good faith follow Bernie down this terrible path.

The biggest threat we face today as Americans is not Donald Trump, but the system that creates a candidate like Trump. A system in which there are two parties that cater to the needs of the wealthiest 0.01% and the mega-corporations instead of the needs of the people. A system in which we have lost any semblance of an objective media and instead are poisoned by falsehoods and poor reporting. A system in which Americans are faced constantly with a lesser of two evils decision instead of a choice for real leadership and courage.

Make no mistake: The Democratic Party has a long, sordid history of subverting progressive movements. They sabotaged Upton Sinclair in the 1930s by attacking his EPIC movement (End Poverty In California) and eventually funding his Republican opponent for governor of California. In the time since then, Democrats have claimed to be against money in politics while accepting huge bribes for campaign donations. Democrats have claimed to be leaders in the fight for equal rights when they pushed for harsh prison sentences to put more people of color in prison. Democrats have claimed to be on the side of truth when they’ve done more to punish whistleblowers than any other group in recent history. Democrats have claimed to be the party of the working class when they have consistently fought to protect the wealth and power of their rich donors, themselves, and their rich friends.

For our people, people who look on with horror at the overtly anti-gay, racist, sexist, anti-science, anti-middle class, anti-progressive stance of the Republican Party, the lies of the Democrats seem enticing.

But we’ve been here before. We know the establishment leaders of the Republican and Democratic Parties work against the American people.

And so we cannot continue to support those who work against us.

As scary as Trump is, and his contemptuous sneer and fascist activities are quite horrifying to behold – The Democratic Party cannot be trusted. Hilary Clinton cannot be trusted. Congresswoman Pelosi and Senator Reid cannot be trusted. Debbie Wasserman Schulz, Dick Durbin, Joe Biden, and Patrick Leahy cannot be trusted.

Therefor I stand with the principles of Senator Bernie Sanders and the movement he has steadfastly lead up to this point, but I will not stand with this endorsement. 43% of Americans identify outside of the broken two-parties. I hope to increase that number significantly. Millions of voters have left the two parties this year, and I believe we can get millions more.

It is incredibly likely that we will end up with another bad president in either Clinton or Trump come November 2016. That deal seems to be settled. The question is if we will end up with another bad president in 2020 or if we will fight for our progressive revolution and take the path toward reform and renewal.

I believe we can build on the progress of this tremendous year by taking back our Congress, our state governments and our city governments by voting for better candidates and defeating the corruption of the two-parties.

And I hope you will join me.

Let’s build a system that doesn’t allow for Trump, rather than participating in a system that creates a Trump for you to vote against.